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We’re silhouettes on a mudflap - flashing go go girls on neon signs - naked daughters of Eve. The bible proclaims Eve was made from Adam’s rib, the curved slender bone that protects his heart, blames Eve because she talked with the snake and ate the apple. We know Eve’s shame - not that we’ve read the bible, heathen queens of the night that we are. We’ve talked to snakes - we’ve listened to them too. These conversations had nothing to do with fruit. * Every morning, we watch the snakes sun themselves on rocks. Later, as the air cools the snakes slither back inside - leaving the light behind. In dusk we conceal our blood red hearts within our jagged shells - our pearls remain buried under our slippery oysters. In the smoke-thick air where bodies are sold, it’s always night - dark as permission. In the dark we’re Lilith - Adam’s secret - his first wife - his nocturnal beast. Everyone said Lilith was a whore - but she was a demon. Like her - we’ve learned to tuck our forked tails between our legs - hide the flames that live inside our mouths - stay inside a small black hole. * Mornings we repent before going onstage. We clean the small black holes of our bodies with wipes made for babies - the babies whose breath Lilith supposedly stole. We cover our bruises with skin-colored cream. We spray ourselves with perfume that smells of peaches. We smile. We remember to see ourselves as the audience sees us. The snakes and the rakes and the jakes. They see us as forbidden fruit. They see us as whores. They see us as demons. * When we eat - we avoid the bruised flesh of the apple - although sour tasting - we prefer the truth. There’s never enough. The truth is - Our legs, our ass, our smile. The truth is - We’re still in the same small black hole. We check our teeth for apple flesh - then we dance - the serpent coiled at our feet. From the author: On The Seventh Day We Shall Not Rest is an exploration of the sex work experience - of being part of a mythology and a collective. Elissa’s writing has been featured in The Rumpus, CRAFT, Atticus Review, Bust Magazine, The Forge Literary Magazine, Tangled Locks and others. She won the CRAFT Literary essay contest and the Silver Rose Flash Fiction prize. Her prose has been nominated for the Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize and listed as Notable by Best American Essays 2025. She’s the recipient of a Creative Individual grant from the Mass Cultural Council. Whore Mother Crone, her memoir in progress, about being a sex worker and mother, was a finalist for the Kenyon Review's Developmental Editing Fellowship. When not writing or reading, she practices real estate, serves on the board of her local theatre, performs improv comedy, and builds bonfires with her witchy friends.

Obscure, Iridescent My love is a multicoloured, sparkly thing, resides upon tree, below butterfly’s underwing; concealed in the pattern of starling and sparrow flight, serene through the ages, revealed when the moment right. It’s there on the breeze, with each first flake of winter snow, approaches and leaves as it pleases (thinks no one knows), freewheels through the ether, forms various cloud constructs, expands under surface, still trickles down mountain bluff, cascades round the river, remaining, since long ago, obscure, iridescent thing better known as love. Through the Mists of Ancient Glen Just be yourself, however hard that seems when every signpost points the other way; surveyors of forlorn, forgotten schemes still call to memory, all dreams betray. Ignoring cadence of such hollow cries, resisting every urge to shuffle feet, let daytime find the whos and wheres and whys; as head meets pillow, know the day complete. There is a place I journey, now and then, where I no longer care about the past, secluded through the mists of ancient glen, relearned by neither wand, nor wizard staff; in future years, returned to once again, still penitent, though warming to the task. Tales to Remember Today, I forgot to be angry as morning sun disappeared her face, perceiving neither wisdom, nor grace in wallow. Debunked destructive intentions when the raindrops began to flow, this afternoon’s washing soaked to pristine foundations. By lunchtime, my roses smelled sweeter on her dulcet rays’ return, inviting smaller creatures, likewise emboldened. Wriggling, twitching, from openings sparser, deeper, we arrived on our scene, reconvened (though in separate ways). Spun tales to remember come moribund, cloud-filled days. Lawrence Moore was something of a dilettante until he reached the age of forty. Since nestling upon poetry's bough, his work has appeared in a number of publications including Roi Fainéant Press, Fahmidan Journal and The Madrigal. He has a new full-length poetry collection, This Joyful Interlude, published by Jane's Studio Press in November 2025.

I saw a moth resting on the garage window, no doubt tired of the brutal summer day. For no intelligent reason I nudged her, poke and poke until she flew for me. Though not a butterfly, she danced like the best of them and if she was tired then what a beauty it is to be tired. She had a splendid garden to land on, but she chose the ugliest tree. A camouflaged lizard attacked and ate the dear moth right before me. And so I make this note: please future me, let moths be. Armando Cruz was born and raised in the mountains of Canóvanas, Puerto Rico, where a love for storytelling was forged during late-night family gatherings under the Caribbean stars. Carlos moved to Washington state in 2009 for college and have called the PNW his second home ever since. He loves fantasy and science fiction as well as writing short stories. He is currently working on his debut novel and a collection of short stories, which will be published in the coming months. When not writing, he is either fishing or curled up with a cup of coffee alongside his wife, Natalie, and his pup, Sadie.

What the Body Keeps Quiet The body is not a vault but a hallway with bad lighting. Every door I pass knows my name. A bruise blooms before the story arrives. A tremor practices what I won’t say. I drink water like an apology. I sleep like someone waiting to be forgiven. Inside me, a small animal paces the ribs, counting exits. I tell myself this is only memory. But memory has teeth and remembers how to bite. Instructions for Standing Still Stop pretending movement equals escape. Plant your feet where the floor is cold and honest. Let the noise sort itself out: sirens, regrets, the names you never learned to say correctly. Stillness is not surrender. It’s the moment you stop running long enough to notice what’s chasing you wears your face. Micro-fictions for a Shrinking World i. The map was wrong. We arrived anyway. ii. She waved goodbye to a version of herself that never existed. iii. Every clock agreed it was too late to be on time. iv. He kept the receipt for the future just in case. v. The silence learned our names before we did. Elegy with the Radio On The radio keeps talking through the worst moments: as if noise were care. A love song leaks into the room where we practice not grieving. Someone sings forever while I fold a shirt that still smells like you. This is how loss happens: background music, commercial breaks, a voice insisting everything will be fine after the weather. The House That Learned Me The house learned my habits before I did. The floorboard by the sink memorized my steps. The window understood my hesitation. Even the dust knew where to settle: on what I touched most. When I left, nothing moved. The house didn’t follow. It simply waited, certain I would return to collect the parts of myself I left behind. Tanka for the Unanswered Call Phone glowing at night: your name flickers once, then turns into weather. Some distances are measured by what never rings. The Day Humor Failed I tried to make a joke out of it: the way people do when pain feels heavier than truth. The punchline collapsed. The room stayed quiet. That’s when I learned: some truths refuse to be softened. They want to be held without laughing. Self-Portrait as a Temporary Structure I am scaffolding: meant to be climbed, not admired. People lean on me while building something else, then thank me for not being in the way. One day I’ll be dismantled piece by piece, and no one will remember what stood here before the view improved. After the Apology After the apology, nothing dramatic happens. No thunder. No instant repair. Just two people standing in the same room with different ideas of what forgiveness costs. We agree to continue. That’s it. That’s the miracle. What Survives the Fire Not the furniture. Not the photographs. Not the careful plans outlined in pencil. What survives is the instinct to reach for someonei n the dark. What survives is the voice saying your name without knowing if anyone will answer. David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores memory, identity, and the quiet intersections between body and spirit. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals including The Orchards, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Silver Birch Press, and Braided Way. He was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and lives in Texas.

There is a small room tucked at the back of an office. No one notices it unless they need it. The air always smells like coffee or chai. Inside, the light is warm and dimmed, and sometimes, out the window, you can catch the sun just before it dips below the trees. Your headphones play a soft, sad song; it’s not enough to make you cry, just enough to make your heart ache. The room holds a chair and a couch. The couch is a little lopsided from being sat on in the same spot too many times. There is a folded green knit blanket draped across the top as if placed on purpose and forgotten at the same time. You can clearly remember the first time that blanket held you; it was expertly and precisely placed as a subtle way to show care. You sit down on the floor and sink in just enough to the couch behind you. The sadness does not go away, but it settles next to you instead of pressing on your chest. The couch does not judge; it just continues to hold you. You stretch your legs out and nudge the baseboard on the wall across from you. Your drink is on the floor beside you, white hot chocolate with a chai tea bag. The chai addition adds something spiced and comforting. You do not need to drink it; it is just there like everything else in the room. Quiet. Patient. You run your hand on the carpet, the faint reminder of a coffee stain that has long been washed away. A piece of you remained in here even in your absence, and you sometimes wonder why it took as long as it did for the stain to be removed. She sees you struggling, trying to ground yourself, verbally reminding you to “take your time, I’m not going anywhere,” while internally you are saying to yourself, “you can come undone here, nothing bad will happen.” Her chair sits in the corner, but the cushion is empty. You never have to look; you just know that she is there with you, even if it means getting on the floor. You sometimes wonder if the couch is still warm from the person before you, and you know that there is a piece of them that remains in the room. You do not have to be okay yet. Even without touch, you are being held by the person on the other side of the floor, gently waiting. The longer you sit, the more the sadness softens, yet it’s not gone, just a little less jagged. Like a piece of it was finally able to exhale. You run your fingers through the knit blanket, tracing the yarn, the chunky stitching. It was not made by hand, but there are still slight imperfections, and it has a way of feeling like a warm hug. You can sense her fidget, a slight shuffle, a little wiggle to get comfortable. The movement is now familiar; it is never out of impatience. It’s just a little reminder that she is there or reaching to grab her own warm mug. You are just two people on the floor, sharing a drink, proof that soft moments exist. There is softness to everything here. The room does not ask anything of you. It does not want answers or progress, or insight. It only offers space. In that dimly lit room in the back-office corner, with the slightly sunken couch, there is an unspoken promise that you do not have to earn rest, you do not have to prove pain, that you belong here just as you are. You shift on the floor, and the couch almost sighs from behind you. It’s soft, low, in a way that feels like the room is breathing with you. You did not realize how tightly you were holding your shoulders until now. Your shoulders finally drop a little, like even your bones are starting to trust this space. Steady. Predictable. Safe. Across the room, there are a couple of shelves. They are not always filled with books, but with things people have left behind. Not because they did not want them, but maybe they did not need them anymore. A plant, a sunflower, and a squishy block of cheese. Everything in here carries a whisper of someone else who sat where you are now, who needed what you need now. The air hums a little differently now. Not louder, not brighter, just more settled. Like the room knows that the thread between you and her has been tugged again, just enough to feel it pull gently at your chest. It does not erase everything, but it makes breathing feel a bit easier. Like, you can stop bracing for just a second. You glance at the window; the frosted privacy film makes it impossible to see in or out of. It turns the outside world blurry and soft. You cannot see far, but you do not need to. Everything that you need right about now is inside these walls. The floor between you holds random snacks. You can smell the peanut butter before she even gets into it. Yours is the candy you actually like, the one you picked on purpose. They are not offered as bribes or distractions, just little anchors. The sadness has not left the room. It is just not the only thing there. It has only been mere minutes for all these thoughts to flow through you. With a last exhale, you are ready. You lean back, feeling the weight of your body press into the couch. Your toes press into the baseboard. Your fingers brush the forest-green knit blanket. You do not know what that hour will hold, if your voice will get quiet or your heart will get loud, but you will know this: you are not alone. The room is still holding you, and she is too. Dani Ranson is a trauma writer, psychology student, and mother of three from Sherwood Park, Alberta. She writes about metaphorical rooms, therapy offices, memory sheds, and the spaces she builds to hold what happened, as a way to process her own healing. Her work centers on embodiment, survival, and the quiet, unglamorous work of staying and coming back to herself.

In the club, everyone’s mouths open at the same time. The bass drops and words fall out — slick, unclaimed — pooling around my boots. Someone says beautiful mama, and the phrase sticks to my skin, glowing faintly, northern, like a bruise that refuses to thaw. I press my palm to my stomach, a reflex I don’t notice until I’ve already done it. Inside me, the baby shifts, slow and buoyant, the way something swims when it isn’t afraid. My body feels anchored, weighted correctly. Around me, everyone else loosens. They sway and smear at the edges, coming slightly undone, as if the room is quietly unbuttoning them, and I am the only one left fastened. My belly grows heavier with each glance. Not bigger — denser. Eyes blink open everywhere — on faces, on walls, in the dark between bodies. The polar bear mural along the club’s back wall locks eyes with me and skates past, white and enormous, its breath fogging the air before it slides back into the wall. Misha fits too easily into the noise. He always has. He kisses me near the cheek — peppermint, cold air — and disappears into the bathroom with a group of men who look like they’ve already forgotten their names. He doesn’t come back. Instead, the door exhales white powder that drifts into the room like pollen. It coats people’s shoulders, their lips, the back of their hands. Men begin to lick it from one another’s faces, careful, devotional. Someone offers me some. I blink instead. A girl in latex finds me. She looks peeled straight out of a bathroom stall — shiny, restless, already sweating. She presses both hands to my stomach and waits, like she’s knocking on something that might answer. “Beautiful mama,” she murmurs, dragging the words out, her mouth close to my ear, wet and curious, like she’s trying to learn how I taste. Her boyfriend leans close and asks what it feels like to fuck a shrine. Then corrects himself, smiling — a pregnant shrine. His girlfriend laughs, and her teeth fall out, clattering across the floor like dice. No one bends to pick them up. People step over them without noticing. I try to leave. The crowd presses inward instead, palms flat against my stomach, listening — not to me, but to what’s inside. Their faces are earnest, almost tender. I feel myself turning into a surface, a site, a thing that means something to everyone but me. I am the only one not dissolving. By morning, the club has shed itself into a kitchen. Light leaks through the windows like an accusation. Dead moths litter the counter, the sink, the floor around my shoes. I don’t remember seeing them inside, but here they are, delicate bodies folded in on themselves. Misha sits at the table, pale, blinking. “I don’t know why I thought doing that was okay,” he says. “I’m embarrassed.” Steam rises from my mug like a little spirit. I watch it instead of him. “I felt like I was disappearing right beside you,” I say. “I didn’t mean to leave you.” When he speaks, moths flutter against the inside of his mouth. I see their wings for just a moment before they scatter, disappearing into the air between us. In the window behind him, the glass holds two figures: myself, and a smaller outline stitched to my spine, watching. When I blink, the moths are gone. The outline remains.

You walk into the new one-bedroom condo on the smooth ebony wooden floors. The afternoon sun spills through the windows, casting a golden glow that breathes life into the space. You move in with your newlywed husband. His stubble strokes against your cheeks when he leans in for a kiss. He sweeps you off your feet and twirls you around in the living room. Your butterfly-printed white dress fans out beneath you as you spin. The small diamond on your ring catches the sunlight, scattering a kaleidoscope of colours across the empty walls. Your husband’s earthy scent tangles with the crisp sterility of fresh paint. Your laughter fills the air. A delicate thrill flutters in your stomach at the thought that you will spend your life together with the man that you love. You hang your wedding photo on the wall—a candid shot of you and your husband gazing at each other against a blurred background of the beach as if the entire world had fallen away. The air hums with expectations packed into this polished condo. You ticked another box off your carefully curated list of life goals. And yet, something tugs at the edge of your heart. # You both work full-time. You moved here for your new job after graduation, and he followed you. He works from home as a data scientist, so he spends his days typing strings of code into a computer. Each morning, you leave for work at the lab, where you make pharmaceutical compounds. When you stay late, your husband already has dinner made, a simple stir-fry with your favourite oyster sauce. You fall into a comfortable routine. After work, you slump on the second-hand couch, click on the television and watch the latest sitcom. Your husband shuts his laptop with a sigh and joins you. His presence comforts you. You run the life treadmill—bags of groceries that need buying, dinners that need to be cooked, floors that need sweeping, dishes that never stop piling up, laundry that always waits to be folded. You divide up the chores since you are partners. You share the burden after all. You rely on each other. You pay rent on time. You both studied hard in school to get here. You can’t help noticing that the laughter that once echoed off the walls now seems thinner, stretched between work hours and financial goals. On your way back from work, you bump into your neighbour in the elevator. He’s around your age and lives in the bigger condo next to yours. You notice that he has an understated confidence in a casually cool sort of way. He slings a golf bag across his shoulder, and he flashes an easy-going smile. You can’t help but wonder if he moves through life more freely than you do. You exchange pleasantries. # You begin to save for a house. You work longer hours, take up side gigs and stash cash in the bank. Your husband feels like a cog in the corporate machine, but stays in his job for financial security. The image of your dream house fills your vision. A three-bedroom in the suburbs with a decent-sized lawn. You can almost see your future daughter swinging on a playset in the manicured backyard. You can hear your husband’s hearty laughter when he scoops her into his arms. You picture her bright-eyed smile, brimming with childhood innocence that you so dearly missed. The vision you created as a child is within reach. Just a few more years, even though that’s what you told yourself a few years ago. In the morning, you weave through the potholes, pylons and traffic lights in your Honda. You wear the same sweater and jeans and carry the same bag you used for school. Doubt creeps in. Your work pays decently, but is it worth it? You wonder if the money will ever be enough. Did you choose this path for yourself, or was it what your parents wanted for you? In your lab coat, you focus on filtering the solution into a funnel, yet after five years on the lab bench, concentration becomes difficult. Work feels repetitive, and motivation slips away when you can’t see the finish line. You watch the drops fall one by one from the funnel into the flask. Maybe you’re just bored. You quiet quit, even though you always went above and beyond. You have spent most of your life within the confines of a box, never straying too far. You like to play it safe. You like to write stories, especially about fantastical worlds. You have been writing since you were a child. But you know it doesn’t pay the bills, it won’t help you buy a house, so you write as a hobby. Perhaps it was a distraction from the real world. On your way home, your neighbour is in the parking garage, leaning over his sports car and laughing with a friend. He gives a friendly wave when he spots you. Your stomach tightens, just for a brief second, before brushing it away. # On the weekend, you lie on the bed with your hair sprawled out beside your husband. You settle into a comfortable silence. “We should go on a trip, just the two of us,” he suggests, his laptop open to an idyllic beachfront in Hawaii. You hesitate, scrolling through house listings on your phone. Your gaze drifts to the computer screen displaying white sand and crystal-clear waters. You sigh. “We should save the money.” It is not that you didn’t want to get away with him. You do. You understand his need to break free from the daily grind as much as your own. But every dollar saved is a step closer to your future, to your planned life. His flicker of disappointment lingers for a second too long. You wonder if he resents you. You wonder if he wanted more, too. At night, you lie beside your husband. The warmth of his body and his familiar earthy scent grounds you. Yet your mind drifts elsewhere. You twirl your wedding ring around your finger and stare at the ceiling. You thought, wouldn't it be nice to run along the beach without a care in the world—to feel the grainy sand weave between your toes, hear the waves crash against the shore and watch seagulls glide across the endless blue sky. Do you really want the responsibilities of a house? The weight of a mortgage? To work to keep paying the bills? # You met eight years ago at a college party. He walked up to you and talked about books and philosophy. You had a thing for the smart academic types, especially those who read. You were both working on your thesis. You exchanged numbers. He offers to walk you to the bus station. Later, he texted to ask you if you wanted to hang out at a board game cafe and you said yes. # You talk with your friends about the future, clinging to your hopes and dreams. They are also running the same treadmill. Some run ahead while others struggle to keep up, but you can’t stop for fear of falling behind. Some friendships endure, while some quietly fade into social media’s background. Not out of spite or betrayal, but simply because you are no longer walking the same path. You miss late-night karaoke sessions, singing songs about broken hearts and first kisses. You miss going to the movies and staying up all night on the phone, whispering about your latest crush. You miss the giggly sleepovers and girl talk after pillow fights. Your friends still hold a place in your heart, but most exist as digital ghosts held together only through scattered messages on your phone. # You run into your neighbour again in the elevator. He strikes up a conversation. Like you, he’s also a child of Chinese immigrants. His eyes light up when he talks about his passion for coaching badminton and owning a small restaurant business. You envy his enthusiasm. He is different from your usual circle of nerdy, academic friends. A college dropout, unburdened by traditional expectations, he is outside the box. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. You tease him about his fancy sports car. He shrugs. “I’m just happy living on my own terms,” he says. “I couldn’t do what you do.” “Why not?” His eyes search yours in a playful way, but also challenge you. “I used to wait tables to pay the bills. But I took risks to get here. And now I can live comfortably even with a simple job that I’ll choose.” “It’s just…I have responsibilities.” You falter. Your words taste hollow. Has your life really been reduced to a rat race? “So do I.” His voice is soft, yet there is an intensity behind it. “Sometimes you just have to go for it.” You meet his gaze for a fleeting moment. You exchange numbers. He texts you flirty messages, and you reply, but you hold back. He shouldn’t play a part in your story. You have a husband. He is an unexpected anomaly impinging on your well-crafted dreams. He talks about his dreams. He wants to retire in a nice beachfront house, a vision similar to yours. You tell him about your dreams, even though you aren’t so sure anymore. He asks if you have thought about doing something else or starting a business. You admit that you’ve had ideas, but you never took the risk. You worked hard to get to where you are today. You didn’t imagine it any other way. He asks about your writing even though he doesn’t read. You try to keep your distance, to hold him at arm’s length, but a part of you wants to be friends. Guilt gnaws at you when you look at your husband. Curiosity excites you more. He understands you in a way you didn’t expect. You catch yourself fantasizing about dating him. To experience the intoxicating rush of something unexplored and blush at the stolen glances. You can’t explain why your heart rate spikes when he’s nearby or why your thoughts drift to the warmth of his lips on yours, his hands running through your hair. Uninvited thoughts linger in your head. You tell yourself not to think about him. You shouldn’t have such thoughts as a married woman. # He invites you to the beach. You agree. You walk alongside him barefoot on the stretch of sand. The sun’s orange glow casts a shimmering path of light across the water. Your footprints trail behind you, only to be erased every few steps when the waves lap the shore. You laugh at his jokes. The wind teases your hair like a lover’s touch at night. “You ever wonder what you’d do if you didn't have to worry about money?” he asks. “All the time,” you confess. You inhale the briny breeze, letting the taste of the sea fill your lungs. “Then maybe it’s worth trying to make that happen,” he says as if it were as easy as flipping a coin. His grin warms you, and for a moment, you wish you could believe him. Something about the way he looks at you makes your heart tighten. He leans in for a kiss, and your heart palpitates inside your chest. His nearness stirs something deep inside you in a way that it shouldn’t. You shouldn’t crave this. You fight to suppress the emotion. The waves rush against the shore with rhythmic persistence and echo the turmoil in your heart. The cool, crisp splash of water against your calves jolts you back to reality. # The sky darkens to a purple hue on the drive back home. You wonder what life would have been like if you had chosen someone like him. Maybe you would already have a house. Perhaps a couple of kids running on the lawn. Maybe you would have more time to write. You wouldn’t have to worry so much about making enough money. You stare at yourself in the elevator’s mirrored doors as you ascend. You’ve spent years building a lasting relationship and saving up. You don’t want to throw away all the years of trust and hard work that have shaped your marriage. Your wedding ring is heavy on your finger. When you come through the door, your husband greets you with a smile and offers you a hug. The condo feels smaller than before, but your husband’s embrace is familiar, and something about that sense of security pacifies you. You glance over his shoulder toward your wedding photo. Your faces in the photo fade into a soft blur, while the waves in the background beckon you. Your time with your neighbour seems like a distant dream. You choose to stay, but you wonder if you can let him go. Wanying Zhang is a Chinese-Canadian writer of speculative fiction based in Montreal. Since she was young, she has dabbled in mixing potions and writing stories fusing elements of Asian and European fairy tales, folklore, and science fantasy. She is a flash fiction winner of the 61st issue of Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter, and received a silver honorable mention in Writers of the Future contest. She is also a recent finalist in Fractured Lit's 2025 Flash Fiction contest and shortlisted in their Gods and Monsters Challenge. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Electric Spec, NWWQ, Flash Fiction Magazine, Metastellar, Tiny Molecules, NewMyths and more. Currently a college professor with too many degrees, she sprinkles the magic of chemistry for future generations.

Peace of Movement Jogging South Lumpkin sidewalk, cars sprint ten miles over, gusting past, even when the wind naps — but I'll find the silence, or reopen, so quiet will slide inside. Slow, my pace, while I open the unnoise — nerves and pulse ease, each foot gently striking, then a green voice whispers in pedal C, motion is life, tone felt not heard — audible to only the oldest elephants. Middle School Our most direct route home took us past Old Man Peterson's peeling-white clapboard house, where he and his body filled an old wicker porch rocker, passing judgment both on us and the 1960s. Too noisy, Too loud, he yelled as we stuck out tongues and raised fists — incitements both to his rage and our laughter. One more thin purple stream bursting on the red map of his nose — penciled by a lifetime of alcohol and anger. But Peterson was a numerical constant in an algebraic universe of divorce and abandoned moms. An unknown, that never needed solving, regardless of our route home. Generations I know, sky without sun, landscape absent green leaves, no balls thrown, bike rides, Pop Warner, no Dad. Father, you liked fishing, a gene on the lone Y, as I stood streamside pole in hand Unseen. Raw clams, no oysters left, our one meal together, trains leaving the Grand Central bar, half full. Broken, PTSD, Mom, wife two, a victim, the son collateral damage, scars itch. Daughters, smiling and grown, despite so many doubts, demons surfacing and then slain, progress. Barbeque We're strangers here I say to the folks seated at two tables one holding half the sheriff's department of Turner County, the other, a local preacher, and two pewter-haired congregants. No staff, no service window, we're flummoxed. The Preacher turns, Y'all order outside at the window, but tell 'em you're eatin' inside. Our stomachs had rumbled to empty and consulting the modern Delphi, Yelp, we found Ashburn, GA's Keven-A-Que, that earned four point six of five. The polar vortex had set up his easel and now painted a chill 34 Fahrenheit. Passing back through a paint-chipped door , we ordered ribs, chopped pork, fried okra, and potato salad. Keven's a remnant of better times, spinning mills, honest money for melons and peaches. Food arrives over our left shoulders — hickory fumes spiraling upwards from melmac — meat unctuous as a used car salesman from Crisp County. In politeness, we swallow belches — barbeque after all. Preacher turns, Where y'all from? My wife says, Athens — we teach at Georgia — the bond instant. Conversation flowed: the frost-etched winter — failed peach pollination, delays in peanut planting. We agree the best potato salad has just enough mayo to glue onion to tuber. Dinner done I turn, You can't find good potato salad just anywhere these days. Preacher looks back, Ain't that the truth of it. Lost and Found Drawer, End of Season, Memorial Park one dime, three nickels, many pennies; lip saver, cherry flavor with hearts; rubber bands - thick blue, thin tan; two black pocket combs; keys, three house, one Jeep; half roll of Rolaids; one jar tanning butter; one can - pepper spray; three unopened tampons; one plastic multicolored lei; one blister pack - birth control pills; two leather wallets, empty; two condoms; one copy Anna Karenina; one yellow rubber duckie; one water-stained letter in rose ballpoint beginning If you really loved me. Gary D. Grossman enjoys sharing his poems and essays, published in 70+ literary reviews. His graphic memoir, three books of poetry and gourmet venison cookbook all may be purchased via his website or Amazon. Gary enjoys running, fishing, gardening and playing the ukulele. Website: https://www.garygrossman.net/

The afternoon was foggy. I took five Percocet instead of one when my medicine was due. My left arm was so swelled when I moved it I had honest-to-Jesus worries it might bust open. The doctor had already said yesterday if the steroids didn’t work he’d have to do a flaying procedure to keep me from losing it completely. “Flay sounds bad,” I said to him when he told me. “Where’s that leave me?” “A significant part of your arm,” he said, “will be gone. I’ll save what I can, but it’ll be noticeable.” But things were noticeable already. Soon as something were to give one way or the other with my arm, I intend to jump to my stories. The computer tower on a desk at the foot of my bed has not been turned on for three months. The last thing I saw on the monitor was a page of a Word document, except that page of prose was for a story called “Discount Paint for Houses,” one of my favorites, looking back. I wanted to get back to writing my stories, but the arm was for sure a problem. The doctor’s appointment had been a week ago with a follow-up set in the next couple of days, but I should have called them. I didn’t have a phone, though. Or television, for that matter. Only the house, because also no car. A lot happened to bring all that together at once, and that’s why I stay inside my stories as much as I can. But there has been help. I walk to my grandmother’s house every few evenings, so I could go there to call the doctor. Then I could borrow my aunt’s truck and go to the appointment. After all that’s done, I’ll could come back here and wait for the painkillers I hope the doctor gives me to start working and write my stories. The person who had been my third wife had split a few weeks ago. She left me three months behind on house payments, and also left an SVU that was hers that was repossessed a few days after she drove off in mine. It had all been building to the point that there was no reason to even get into all that was wrong around this time. It was just all wrong. I would lose the house a month after my arm cleared up with a second round of steroids. And after had been the hoped-for pain meds. And the beer, when I could borrow money to get any and find a way to a store to get it. It happened more than you might think. I stayed high and drunk enough that I could still write sharply but not sober enough to fall into the black mouth of an odd pseudo death. Now I can understand that I wasn’t trying to do anything except write the stories. If I could get out of my head a little and get in front of that computer screen and compose, then I let everything else go. When I started to worry, feel guilty, panic, get depressed, cry uncontrollably, cry in pain, cry from guilt, fold inward on myself, I turned on the computer monitor and pulled up whatever story I was writing and floated. It was all wrong and it was all strange. “Discount” had been a good story. It took me out of the world for a good spell. But it wasn’t the one I most remembered writing around that dark-as-a-crow’s-wing time period. I remembered writing what ended up being the title story of the collection, which would eventually be published, one called “The Same Terrible Storm.” But the individual stories mattered less than the whole of the stories themselves, the collective final gasps of one life passing away and the uncertainty if another would take its place. “Storm” was sad, like all my stories, and exactly as all my novels would be in the decades to follow. But I kept at it; I wrote my stories to keep from going slowly insane, even though they were sad. Sad, sad, sad, all the way down. / It was about a week after a crew came and repossessed the doublewide that I moved in with my Aunt Jimmie. Her Auxier Heights apartment had no light fixtures. Aunt Jimmie had bought five or six lamps, the tall kind, not the old-fashioned ones. She had them in the corners of each room so that the light was always at a low level and always seemingly dimming lower and lower. It wasn’t all bad, the lighting. With my computer on it gave off a nice glow like a white-flamed fireplace. It was calming and made writing that much better. It was another week when I got my first story rejection in the mail. “That’s just one person’s opinion,” she said, raising her chin in the air and sweeping her long, Old-Regular-Baptist hair defiantly over her shoulder. I didn’t say different, because I supposed she actually wasn’t all wrong. I started to develop false hope. I stopped being a writer and became a participant in the literary race of which I’d always had the highest level of disdain. Soon, Aunt Jimmie started asking if she could read my new stories. Or maybe the collection of stories she’d mailed out for me. How could I say no? She read the collection and brought the stack of pages into my bedroom and dropped it on the bed where I lay reading. “Don’t know what you expect trying to get rich with stuff like that,” she said. It was as disappointed as I’d ever seen my aunt. And she’d been through some difficult times in her life. Ex-husbands who were exes because they had beat the shit out of her, like the first, or slept around with everybody she knew, church friends, everybody, like the second one. Had it been her hopeful imaginings of my stories somehow selling and pulling us from the world of poorly lit rooms in Lego apartment buildings checked by HUD inspectors every month? Yes, it had been exactly that. I made a pot of coffee the morning after she tossed the manuscript aside like a stained shirt. I asked her to give me some ideas for jobs and took a careful sip from my cup. “Write your books,” she said, her eyes shining more spirit than usual. It had happened before, someone telling me to make a living as a writer without knowing precisely what it meant. It’s no one’s fault, all those who do it; they’re only speaking from a place of love or encouragement, but it’s a difficult goal to achieve. Instead of answering in some way that would insult or hurt her feelings, a smartass reply, in other words, I said for now what I needed was just a job. My career path would have to wait. This made sense to her and then she offered up a dozen or more options for plain old jobs. When she was done, the suggestion to try to get back with the newspaper was the best I’d heard. I had been thinking about it myself, so I borrowed her ’83 Ford pickup and drove to Pikeville, home of the Pike County News. / A strange thing happened, though. After I landed the job (a new publisher had been hired, so the interview involved a lot of catching him up), I gradually began to regret it. By the time I was back to Aunt Jimmie’s, I was sure I’d made a bad decision. So now again I had to let her know without making her feel bad about her advice. What I let her know was that when I wrote for the paper before, it was a high-stress job for not much pay. And it still wasn’t much pay: a mere ten dollars an hour. I told her I would do better to get a job at McDonald’s. I’d seen on their sign they were hiring at eleven dollars twenty five cents an hour. She was astonished, more or less, about the pay rate, but still insisted it would be easier to take a job I already knew I was good at rather than jump into fast food, which she personally knew to be a beast in ways difficult to explain. I took the newspaper job and showed up the following Monday, worked two weeks, and studied my pay stub. It was all I needed to see to understand I would be staying with Aunt Jimmie for awhile, and she was okay with that. Still, it was a good job for a man eviscerated. The first week there I finished three stories. Each one longer than the next. I wasn’t crazy about it. I always liked to hit about five or six pages on a story and then, boom, the end. It’s called a short story for good reason. I thought of stopping once. Maybe things had improved enough that I could and get back to a normal writerly routine. But I didn’t, and the pages kept adding up. At one point, I thought I might have started a novel, but that wasn’t it. I could have called a couple of them novellas, by definition and accepted phrasing in the writing community. But I never liked the idea. If it’s not a short story, it’s a novel. And on the fringe, there are poems accidentally becoming short stories. It went like this for a long while, me spending any extra time I had only writing. I can’t imagine how I was able to do it and not stay constantly guilty or worried. It was easy at the time, being so self-absorbed. Maybe I felt I deserved some decisions made just for me. I’d been through a lot. But I still planned to make more of an effort to at least spend some of my free time with Aunt Jimmie. I finished enough short stories for a book, a collection of stories. All of them except maybe two were really solid. I could tell, and I wasn’t surprised. I had always done better work when broken down into my most fundamental parts, either through bad relationships, addiction, depression, or circumstances exploded from bad decisions like supernovas born out into the mess. I printed four copies of the manuscript at the library and Aunt Jimmie mailed them out for me. I had her keep a tally of how much it cost in postage so I could pay her back. “That won’t be a bit of a problem when you get one of them books published and make a million dollars,” she said after getting back from the post office. She wasn’t trying to insult me. The comment sounded sincere, and probably was. The everyday person had a point of view, I believed, that if somebody had a book published that it was an achievement so rarely made that there must be some kind of incredible reward. A movie contract, Hollywood at your beckon call, mansions like Stephen King’s. Basically, Aunt Jimmie and a lot of other people thought getting a book published resulted in the same thing that happened to King. Instant millionaire, books everywhere being read by everybody. And you couldn’t explain and really manage to completely shake them from the idea. I let Aunt Jimmie think that, yes, if I had the book published, I would buy her and myself mansions in whatever state we wanted. She wanted so little, even for daydreaming. Only a comfortable home. One with three bedrooms, all made up nicely as guestrooms for visitors to have a place to rest and sleep that was as comfortable as their own at home. She wanted to decorate those rooms with nice pictures on the walls and little antique washstands with bowls white as snowflakes in the corner beneath a fancy mirror where her friends could check their faces and hair after washing. “Wouldn’t they just do that stuff in the bathroom?” “Not in my fantasy, Vince,” she told me. And I swear I thought I could see tears in her eyes. / I probably knew Aunt Jimmie’s real story better than anybody. Her first husband began dating her when she was fourteen and he was twenty-five. The man had every intention of grabbing her young and raising her up like a hunting dog to serve him in whatever ways he desired. By the time she wrested herself away from him, she was seventeen and shared with this pedophilic, weak excuse of a man a sickly son. They divorced when the boy was two, and the man only spoke to the boy three times after that to tell him all three times that he never wanted to be a dad. Less than a year later, she and her son moved in with a man closer to her age. But he was a troubled, abusive alcoholic, and beat her regularly, while spending his Friday paycheck on alcohol and women. By this time, she’d had another child, a little girl this time, with the younger man. She and her two children nearly starved in those years. Much of the first year after her little girl was born, there was only a bottle of water mixed with sugar for the baby and a jug of spring water and the occasional loaf of bread and stick of butter for her and her son. All three grew malnourished, moved month to month when rent came due, and Aunt Jimmie eventually lost them both to child protective services. That was the end of her first life. When the children were taken, she dropped from the family map. Everyone had their turns trying to find her, tracking her once as far as Idaho only to see the trail go cold a week later. When she came home, she was transformed. Not as a new woman or a stronger person or reinvented with a renewed passion to reunite her family. She returned a spiritless person, a woman whose soul had suffered a splintering death and left her empty in all respects. However, even a spiritless person must eat, and Aunt Jimmie eventually took a job. She hitchhiked to work while saving money for a truck, bought the first one she could find for three-hundred, and kept working. From then to now, I’ve only ever known of her, outside of rent and utilities, to buy food. She has worn the same clothes all my life and bought only one pair of Justin boots, good and sturdy, the kind, if taken care of, could last twenty years or more. Aunt Jimmie’s stories were the kind that shatter stone, hard beyond measure, close enough to Hell they could boil water, and so constantly heartbreaking it could jerk a tear in a glass eyeball, as she put it. “Music got me through a lot of it,” she said one night. “Not sad music, but songs from the Eighties. Fun songs, you know? They made those back then. Cindy Lauper, Culture Club, Billy Joel, and, oh my, Weird Al. They just go on and on. None of this grunge punk the world is a bag of shit and my life ain’t fair bullshit Nirvana and just all that morose, I-hate-everything bunk.” “Yeah, just good fun music,” I said. I’d never heard music during that time talked about that way, yet it was so true. Money for nothing and chicks for free? How could it get any lighter and more laid back? Some nights we made up fun songs, new takes on old classics. Other times we listened to 107.3, a local station that played Eighties music. Africa, Billie Jean, Let’s Hear It for the Boys, Micky, Puttin on the Ritz. Fun songs, fun stories, all stories meant to make people feel good, aimed at entertaining, not preaching. That old music led to Eighties movies. Footloose, The Breakfast Club, The Outsiders, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Fletch, dozens of those old King Arthur flicks popular back then like Excalibur, the best of them all. We listened, we watched, we built our barricades with stories offering open arms, replete with good hearts. And other than her grudge against dark, introspective, nihilistic music, Aunt Jimmie never really complained, not in the way you might expect, not mantled in self-pity or in constant search for pity from others. Our talks were venting sessions, ways of saying aloud what could hardly be believed or survived otherwise. Misery loving company. We were anti-Hallmark cards, anything but uplifting and pleasant reminders that there were people in the world walking about with good, open hearts. / In the evenings I had free, we ate supper in the living room and talked about what could be, what we hoped for whenever circumstances improved. It was the fantasy exercises again. But we were both fine with it. Aunt Jimmie insisted before she shared any more that I say what kind of house I would want. I said I wasn’t sure I wanted a house, not necessarily. I’d had a doublewide, a nice one with three bedrooms, two and half baths. “I might want a two-story log cabin, but one of those real sharp ones. Chimney, big fireplace, some of that old rustic looking stuff in the kitchen like a brick oven and a hood vent, big sinks with those faucets that you can move around.” “But you don’t cook.” “I could learn.” Aunt Jimmie started expanding out from houses. She talked about places she would go, places besides the Smokies and Myrtle Beach. Paris, London, Hawaii, those places. Every so often while listening I had to remind myself that these were her dreams, that I shouldn’t say a thing against them. Even if I did want to tell her that I’d heard Paris smelled like piss all day and all night. “First I’d hire somebody to take me to those places, though,” she said. “I get lost going two hours to Lexington. I’d never make it to Hong Kong and back.” We were slipping off into a seductive arrangement of dreams, not fantasies. Fantasies were safe because they were so far from reach there was no risk of a rising hope coming to the surface. Dreams were just enough to inspire ambition. And ambition, if not guided by absolute clear-sightedness, would unquestionably end in disappointment. Dreams were too close to a common enough realm, too tangible, too possible. For the hopeless, nothing worked better than the unattainable constructs of a strong fantasy. “Why not become an emperor and have your advance team plan, take you, and accommodate you on any travels you’d want to do?” I said. “Emperor. Yes, that’s a fine thought,” Aunt Jimmie said. You could see by her grin she knew what I was thinking. Having a new car or finding a good-paying job were for the others, people who already had means. Those were plans, not the elaborate worlds we could pull from thin air. “Ah emperor,” she said again, feeling the word on her tongue. “I wouldn’t be a dick emperor, either. I’d kick the highfalutin folks out and bring in the good old guys and gals. Have parties with all that fun music of ours. I’d have a full theatre built onto the house. Not a theatre room. I’m talking about the big screen. Projection booth and all. Have a concession stand free to all.” She was on a roll. “I would go for the subtle, though,” I said. “What’s that mean?” “The big prize stuff like a lifetime — no, wait — lifetimes of peace and comfort. Days where all the little things go right, days after days of that. Red lights turning green at the perfect time, your work slipping into a flow so natural it no longer feels like labor, communicating perfectly with the people you love, the people who matter.” I stopped and put my hand on top of Aunt Jimmie’s. “People like you, Aunt Jimmie.” It was late. What was left of supper was cold on the stovetop. “Tell me more about the subtle, big prize stories,” she said. And so I did. Over the next several months I became a skilled revisionist and even better at complete overhauls. We took our worst days and compared them to our best days, we pulled threads of memories when small things went well, hundreds and hundreds of these brilliantly luminous threads, and created a future that reposed perfectly in spacetime. I also spent time during those months writing new stories. They came easier and hurt less and maybe they were not better for it, but I enjoyed it. Aunt Jimmie even wrote a couple stories. She had one or two based on some of those Eighties songs, and they were pretty good. I suggested she send some out, see if a journal or two might pick them up. “These ain’t for other people,” she told me. “Just like them we tell each other at night, these are for us. It’s not everybody could appreciate our stories.” I didn’t want to say what I was thinking, that it would be for the ones who needed them the way we did, because I knew in the truest rooms of my heart that all of this, as far as Aunt Jimmie was concerned, was for me and her. It was our thing, the hard work of our own imagination down in the fray with us against empty refrigerators, dead-end jobs, rickety vehicles, t-shirts ten years old or more, words foreign to us like vacations and savings, real-world mysteries like health insurance, retirement, and new car smells. And when it was all in fantastic sync, we used our thin-air worlds to tell each other how it would be, how genuinely and routinely good it would be without ceasing and for all time. Everything was still only the stories, like it never would be again. Sheldon Lee Compton is a short story writer and novelist from Kentucky. His novel, Oblivion Angels, is currently nominated for both the Chaffin Fiction Award and the Weatherford Award. The Independent Fiction Alliance named his novel, Alice, a 2023 Best Book of the Year. His collection, Fallujah Boy and Other Stories, is set for publication in May 2026.

Melinda screamed, hot, forceful breath scraping her teeth. She was doing what she was supposed to, that’s how aggrieved mothers behaved. “You want your baby to die, asshole?!” The voice on the other end of the call was deep, distorted–a deadbeat Darth Vader. Offended, Melinda wanted to scold Scott for taking things too far, his inclusion of “asshole,” but much like her screaming, there was a protocol to follow; he was just doing his part. A “fuck” would most certainly be coming next. “You want your fucking baby to die?!” Scott’s warbled voice got high, his words overlapping, stapled together in an audial slap. Melinda wanted to nod, having guessed the raised verbal stakes. Still, instead, she looked to the officer sitting on her chewed-up ottoman, its stuffing spilling out, reminded Melinda of certain girls in Daisy Dukes, skin sneaking free. The cop made a swiveling motion with his hand, keep talking. She wondered if he might also like to tack on an “asshole” to this gesture, emphasizing the importance of her essential part in solving such a lurid crime. “Are you still there, shithead?!” Man, Melinda thought, Scott was nailing his role as kidnapper. They had spent the last two weeks practicing, every night after they finished closing, turning the lights out at their respective jobs, him at Shakey’s and Melinda at Chester Cheeseums. They’d come home, more tired than a dog after pushing out a litter, and go over the minute details of the plan, finishing their nightly preparations with a little game of kidnapper-victim improv. Sans profanity, Scott had been consistently strong during rehearsals and though Melinda had been weak at the start, trying to force tears rather than staying in the moment (“Babe, that’s, like, improv rule number one,” he’d remind her), she got stronger as the nights wore on. But what were the specific tweaks Scott told her to implement, Melinda wondered with that deep voice stabbing her brain. Touch myself! she remembered, wanting to snap in ascertainment, but she tamed this urge because moms of kidnapped children ain’t snapping, they’re holding themselves, looking for comfort like a bleary-eyed pup searches for the teat. “I want my baby!” Melinda cried and shot a hand up toward her neck. Her aim was off and she accidentally dragged her fingers up across her right breast. The surveying cop squinted, bemused. Melinda saw this out of the corner of her eye and course-corrected by pulling at her throat. “You gotta sell the anguish, baby,” Scott had repeated during their rehearsals, stinking of grease and sharp cleaning agents. “Please, sir, please! Just tell me what to DOOO!” Melinda said, beginning to rub her neck. There was a hunger in her voice that sounded sexual, the kind of tone meant for fumbling across soft rugs, but she figured that as long as it was impassioned, it would work. “Here’s what you’re gonna do…” The deep voice cooed. Hearing indecipherable crunching sounds, Melinda brought the device closer to her ear despite the loudness of the speakerphone, rapt, as if she had no idea what was coming. She felt proud of her sharpened performance, proud of her husband for being such an instructive, guiding teacher. “You’re gonna hand over $10,000 and leave it in the arcade of the San Sarita Mall, by the pinball machines in a white trash bag. Got it?!” “Yes! Yes!” Melinda’s performance was getting more raw and primal, so much so that the officer turned his gaze to the floor. But she couldn’t help it. This was the closest she had felt to Scott since the arrival of their child, Scooter Jr., now barely 12 months. It had bothered Scott that his son’s name practically rhymed, but Melinda got the privilege of naming him after her father, Scooter Senior, since she’d be doing most of the rearing while Scott provided and spent most of his off-hours rehearsing. “Any craft is a muscle,” Scott’d say, calling her late at night, telling her that he and Clifton, his theatre buddy, were working out their violent and visceral interpretation of Coriolanus, honing their breath-work. “You won’t believe this stage combat,” he’d say, his grin stabbing through the phone. Melinda had wanted to ask what that meant and why the San Sarita Community Theatre had yet to announce a production of Coriolanus. But when Scott came to her with this plan, his big blue eyes pleading, Melinda forgot all about that, for once feeling included, and her questions ran down the drain, much like the speckled mop water after chipping away the hardened cheddar off the Chester Cheeseums floor. The “kidnapper” continued his demands. “And you’re gonna do it tonight, you got that, you fuck?!” Hurt, Melinda flashed her eyes at the verbal assault, and she thought to protest until realizing she was naturally reacting as someone in distress would, shrinking under cruelty. “Is-Is my baby alright?!” She was going off-book. In the outline, at this point, Melinda was supposed to have agreed then hung up. But wasn’t that improv, allowing for the unexpected? Plus, Melinda wanted to know about Scooter Jr.’s well-being. “Uh, he’s fine, but this little bitch will be deader than a Christmas tree in July if you don’t pay up!” Melinda turned to the cop with a grimace, big and “cheesy”–one of embarrassment rather than fear–but what could she say, the acting bug had never properly bit down upon her. And that was why Scott had come to her, waking her in the night with his hair mussed and his eyes wild. Scott explained that there was this prestigious acting workshop he’d been admitted to, the hallway light cutting across his face, making him as beautiful as the day she met him in that parking lot–defined features, particularly the jawline–asking Melinda if she needed help carrying her super-sized bundle of toilet paper. (“It was on sale. I don’t have a medical problem,” she had added.) Cause her real “problem” was just how much she loved Scott. And that night of pleading, in their cramped bathroom, Melinda’s love held and Scott utilized a “stage whisper,” shower running, as he described the kidnapping, the burner phone, the $10,000 ransom coming from his parents, middle-class retired folk who hoarded their life’s earnings should a medical emergency arise not because their middle-aged son might attend some silly acting workshop in Albany. “They’ll shell out for Scooter, though,” Scott had said. Melinda barely knew her in-laws. They were quiet around her, but also quick to critique her physical appearance. “Is that…” Scott’s mother once said, sniffing around Melinda. “Muenster cheese in your hair?” It was. Melinda often left work with a morsel stuck somewhere. But it didn’t bother her that Scott’s parents cared little for her. Instead, she understood their chillness and frugality and why their son would sooner hatch a dummy plan to kidnap his own wriggly baby instead of asking them and their cutting glances outright for money. Melinda screamed again, this time to release, feeling more tense every second, especially with the officer right next to her. Next came the sought-after, scene-selling tears she had hoped for. “I’ll do whatever you say! Just don’t hurt my baby!” She couldn’t wait to hold her son again, cradle him in her brawny arms, the constant cleaning her main source of exercise. Then the tears became a product of joy as a feeling of congratulations swelled within her. Melinda was part of a family unit, a mother and a wife, and when it counted, when she was needed, she proved she could show up. The tears were also because of her pride in Scott, who was succeeding in achieving his dreams. It would be hours before they secured the bag of cash from Scott’s parents and even longer before Scott, pretending to have to go to work despite the kidnapping, picked up the money at the mall. He had been employed there years ago and knew to enter and exit through hallways rarely used, adorned with antiquated security cameras that collected more spider eggs than any real footage. And Melinda, the horrified, distraught mother, would be driven to the entrance of their town to find baby Scooter Jr., snug in a basket, dressed warmly by his mother. But no one would put that together; the San Sarita police were under investigation for snorting speed faster than they confiscated it. Once Scooter Jr. was back home and Scott returned early from “work,” their fictitious hell would be over, and maybe it would make for a sensational, captivating story, tragedy with a happy ending. “Are you still there, asshole?!” “I’m here! I’m here!” Melinda was giving the terrorized performance of a lifetime: clutching herself at the biceps, squinting through dripping tears. She only hoped that money and the acting workshop would help Scott feel fulfilled, as fulfilled as she felt screaming for the well-being of their baby. Grey Traynor (they/she/he) is a transfemme writer who has been published in XRAY, Time Out SF, Beacon Quarterly, Gold Man Review, Doubleback Review, and BULL. They attended the 2025 Tin House Summer Workshop and they read at the 2025 Portland Book Festival. They're currently querying manuscripts. Find them on Twitter/Instagram @greytraynor and at www.greytraynor.gay

A fog does not roll in. Rain does not fall, does not soak the earth until suffocating worms rise, blind and glistening, to be met by opportunistic birds. When she opens the door, it does not creak. The air is very still. Dust does not rise. As she steps inside, the floorboards do not groan. Nothing moves. The house is so well behaved. Walking through the old, empty hallways of her childhood, she feels no cold spots. It's amazing, really. You wouldn't know this place was haunted, if not for all the ghosts. She can hardly wade through the crowd of them. They linger in doorways and recline on the couch. Some are seated politely at the kitchen table. Others stand at windows, looking out at an unfamiliar world. They are all her, of course. Slight variations. Discarded drafts. The one who never moved away. The one who married too young. The one who was brave and followed Jenny Barnett to college. The one who never answered the phone. The one who did and wished she hadn’t. They are everywhere, soft and overlapping. The silence of all of her unfinished sentences. At the end of the hallway, there is a door that should not be there. On the other side of the door is a desk where a single ghost sits, writing. This one looks up, smiles. Her face is older, calmer. “You made it back,” she says. The ghost signs her name, their name. The others begin to fade. Not gone, but gathered. Slipping into her. Filling the empty rooms beyond her ribs. Outside the rain begins at last. Soft, certain, and real. Whitney McShan is a Texas native who lives outside of Austin with her wife and son. Her work has been featured in Hellbound Books Anthology of Horror, Instant Noodles Lit Mag, and the upcoming anthology With Teeth. She is interested in the strange, the uncanny, and the monstrous.

The Box arrived on a Tuesday. This already upset most of the planet, because everyone knew that if something important ever came from space, it should at least have had the courtesy to show up on a Friday evening, when people had nothing better to do. It didn’t land in Washington, Moscow, or Beijing. It didn’t hover above the pyramids or land itself on the White House lawn. It simply appeared, without warning, in a small car park behind a shopping mall in Milton Keynes. At first, people assumed it was an art installation. The box was black, smooth, and entirely unhelpful in shape or purpose. Soon, scientists arrived, followed by journalists, followed by the sort of people who always seem to show up whenever something “possibly alien” happens: the man with a clipboard, the woman with too many crystals, and at least one person claiming to be half-reptile. For three weeks, humans did what humans do best: they argued. Was it dangerous? Was it a gift? Was it a bomb? Was it, as one local newspaper suggested, “a very advanced fridge”? And then, one morning, without fanfare, a thin slit opened in the Box. Papers began to spill out. Thousands of them. Sheets of alien stationery, each written in crisp, oddly polite script, and all translated perfectly into Earth languages. At the top of the first page was a neat title, underlined twice in blue ink: “Feedback and Suggestions: Earth Branch” The scientists expected equations. They expected alien blueprints, star maps, maybe a universal cure for death. Instead, the first letter read: To: HumansFrom: Mars Hello, neighbours. We noticed you’ve been sending satellites over here. Most of them crash, sputter, or get stuck spinning around like a drunk mosquito. We just wanted to say: they’re terrible. Please send better ones next time. And stop calling us “dead.” We’re very much alive, just shy. The second letter was shorter. To: Humanity in General From: The Galactic Noise Complaint Office Please turn down your televisions. We can hear them three galaxies away. Nobody needs that much reality TV. Then came a rather long one. To: Sir Isaac NewtonFrom: Point Black Hole Orbital Minds, Beta Lyrae We admire your work. Gravity was a nice touch. But we should probably tell you something: you’re not human. You’re one of us. We misplaced you in 1642 during a cargo transfer, and you landed in England by mistake. Honestly, you did well for yourself. Please come home. P.S. You were never supposed to invent the cat flap. That was an accident. There was also a note for animals, which confused everyone even more: To: Earth WhalesFrom: The Republic of Enceladus Dear cousins, we see you’re still stuck with humans. That must be rough. Hold on. We’re working on a petition to get you relocated. Stay strong and keep singing. We hear you. By the time the first hundred letters were read, it was clear:The Box wasn’t a weapon.It wasn’t a gift.It was a complaint desk. The scientists were no longer arguing about the purpose of the Box. Instead, they were now competing to see whose field of study got insulted the most. The next handful of letters didn’t even mention humans: To: Earth AntsFrom: The United Swarm of Zeta Reticuli You’re doing fine. Honestly, you’re the best species on your planet. Keep it up. P.S. Humans copied “cities” from you and then had the nerve to think they invented it. Don’t worry, we noticed. To: Earth PigeonsFrom: The High Council of Altair Please stop walking in circles near statues. You’re interfering with our navigation systems. Also, we intercepted several of your signals, and frankly… they’re offensive. To: William ShakespeareFrom: The Bureau of Interstellar Literature We quite liked your plays. The comedies were decent, the tragedies better, but the histories… dreadful. Also, that “to be or not to be” line? You borrowed it from us. One letter appeared to be directed at someone not even born yet. To: A Girl Named Priya, Age 9, in the year 2087From: Department of Cosmic Cartography Please stop doodling galaxies in your schoolbooks. Every time you do, we have to adjust an actual galaxy to match. Its paperwork is a nightmare. ------ By now, it was obvious that the Box was not going to hand humanity the key to the universe.Instead, it was handing humanity a long list of one-star reviews. The next stack of letters came out thicker, heavier, and somehow more judgmental. To: HumanityFrom: The Ministry of Reality Checks, Planet Thark-12 Why do you believe invisible sky-people control your lives? We invented gods once, too. Then we got bored and moved on. Try hobbies. It’s healthier. The letter caused a priest at the reading to faint. It made three atheists laugh very loudly. To: Planet Earth,From: The Ulthior We don’t understand politics. You argue for centuries about who gets to sit in a chair, while the chair itself is on fire. Please reconsider. To: Adolf HitlerFrom: The People of Hyrants Terrible job. Absolutely terrible. Your ideas weren’t even original. We tried fascism thirty thousand years ago and got bored in a week. By the way, a moustache is not a good look. You should have stuck to painting. At this point, a group of people in the audience started whispering furiously. One of them suggested perhaps the Box should be destroyed, because history, after all, was their job. To: Earth EconomistsFrom: The Fungus Kingdom of Deneb-F8 Money is imaginary. You’ve built your entire species on numbers that don’t even exist. We tried the same system once. Ended with everyone owning the moon, twice. Good luck. By now, the crowd around the Box was growing restless. Some laughed, some shouted angrily. The Box did not reply. It only released another letter. By the fifth week, people no longer came to the Box expecting answers. They came for the entertainment. Reading the letters had become a kind of global sport. News channels ran them live, betting agencies gave odds on what the next complaint would be, and teenagers made memes within seconds of each new release. The Box, of course, didn’t care. It just kept spitting out notes. To: The United NationsFrom: The Tree Council of Rigel-7 You are very proud of your “flags.” We don’t understand this. You wave colored cloths around as if the cloth owns the land. We have no flags. Our land owns us. Please stop stabbing each other over fabric. To: Earth PoliticiansFrom: The Wind Guild of Arcturus Stop pretending you are leaders. You are not leading. Please update your job titles to “professional excuse makers.” You are being dragged behind events like a sock tied to a spaceship. This one went viral online in less than five minutes. Thousands of people changed their LinkedIn bios to “Professional Excuse Maker.” Several politicians tried to sue. By now, protesters had begun camping outside the Box. Some demanded it be destroyed because it was “alien propaganda.” Others demanded that it be made president, for it spoke more truth to the people than any other president ever had. To: Humanity’s Military LeadersFrom: The {..}{..}{..}{..} Federation of Kepler-186f Your wars are embarrassing. Single-celled organisms on our planet conduct battles with more strategy. At least they divide properly. You just destroy things and call it “honor.” By this point, people weren’t laughing as much. Some were angry, others were uncomfortable. A few cheered. Most just sat in silence. The Box hummed. Another letter slid out, a single shiny letter, stamped with authority. It was for India. Everyone gasped. Even Trump muttered, “India got the shiny letter before me.” Letter from Alien Citizen “X9zq42k” of Planet 7510238751-7 To: The Election Commission of India Subject: Kindly Remove Our Names from Your Voter List Dear Humans, It seems our citizen “da346ss3f” has been listed as someone’s father in your records. He is not a father, just an asteroid miner, currently mid-divorce. Please don’t complicate things for him. We also notice a voter named only “.”, and a house number listed as “0”, which makes no sense since “.” Never voted for the BJP in the Indian elections, and “0” is dead. Lastly, 7510238751-7 has no interest in your elections. We eat meteor dust, not manifestos. Kindly remove our names; your democracy is fascinating, but it is yours, not ours. Intergalactically yours,X9zq42kPlanet 7510238751-7, House No. –-==-[] When the letter surfaced, BJP leaders called it “fake news,” but somehow also claimed it proved their “Desh Videshee program” was working. Modi gave a speech saying, “Even beings from other galaxies trust our vikas.” Then came the biggest one of all, a letter glowing brighter than the sun. People thought it was a holy sign, some new scripture from the heavens. Priests, pandits, mullahs, popes, all rushed to claim it for their own. But when it was finally read, the words were brutal: To: Planet Earth, Concerning Religion From: The Arch Librarians We counted that you have 4,200 religions. Impressive. But none of you ever considered the possibility that you’re all wrong? We suggest combining them into one large religion called “We Have No Idea.” You have not understood God. God is not your idol, your statue, your temple, your war cry. God is not who you kill for, nor who you pray to for power. You carved stone and called it divine. You built religions and called them truth. But the truth is simpler: the divine was never outside you; it was always within. You fought over illusions.” After the last words were spoken, it was silent for a while, perhaps too long. The black box shut its little cat-flap and disappeared. It didn’t fly away; it simply vanished. The aliens had believed that showing humans an outsider’s perspective of their planet would make them better. But almost everyone forgot about the black box. No one spoke of it. And now, some people are using it as a plot for their short stories…